Hands-on with WildStar

State of the Game

WildStar, as you may already know, is a highly stylized, sci-fi/fantasy MMORPG. If you haven’t seen the WildStar Youtube Channel, I highly recommend it, especially the Dev Speaks. That’ll get you spun up on the game, its base systems, and charm better than I can do with words here.

Wilstar is currently in closed beta. There have been over 1.4 million unique signups to be in the beta. Very big updates are being pushed out by the development team each month, which they plan to continue post launch. I want to stress that. They are planning large content updates each month, just like they are doing in beta, not just fixes and minor additions. This means more Adventures, more dungeons, and more story content. A completely redesigned HUD layout will be a part of the next patch that drops. At this stage, the team is mostly polishing and bug fixing, meaning we got to see pretty much all of the content that will be available at launch. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an MMO launch with so many features, truly impressive.

Game Lore

It’s not uncommon for modern MMOs to try to tell a story throughout your time in world. WildStar has a great setting for their story, that being the planet Nexus and the secrets in holds after a hyper advanced race disappeared 1000 years ago. What’s important to you as the player is that you’ll get all the major story details without having to complete high level raids. Not only will the elder game solo content reveal the story as it exists at launch, WildStar promises episodic monthly content that will continue the world story.

Classes and Paths

In WildStar you’ll find the traditional set of classes that fill different roles in combat. The dev team didn’t shy away from the “holy trinity” of tank, healer, and DPS. That being said, the way you pick abilities and AMP sets can change the role a single class can play.

What’s really unique is the Path that you choose along with your class. Paths are an extension of how you, the player, like to play an MMO. Are you the type that would rather walk through every corner of every zone rather than sit and fight for XP? You can choose the Explorer Path to unlock areas of zones that no one else can find. There are three other like that to choose from depending on whether you like to fight (Soldier), be social (Settler), or dig into the game lore (Scientist). Path choices also come into play in other areas of the game, as we saw during a giant level 50 public event. For example, my settler was able to activate cooling vents in a dungeon that kept players from overheating due to the radiation filled rooms.